Stop fretting over religious sensitivities. We must push hard against Islamists

In
this time of political uncertainty, we can be certain about one issue.
The battle against Islamist extremism is one we are losing. News of
23,000 jihadis living in Britain, each considered to pose at least a
“residual risk”, indicates the breathtaking scale of the challenge
facing us. The horse, as they say, has well and truly bolted.
We need to learn lessons from previous mistakes, including our
comatose response to growing religious fundamentalism. Yet the truth is
we remain blind to the facts. With our liberal blessings, extremist
preachers are free to promote their hatred, virtually unchallenged.
Anjem Choudary radicalised hundreds, if not thousands of Muslims freely
over 20 years. As a result, he influenced more than 100 Britons to carry out or attempt to carry out terrorist attacks at home and abroad.
We defended the right of extremists to free speech in the belief that
the most effective way of undermining them was for us to counter their
speech. This was nice in theory; there was, however, one rather large
problem. Apart from a handful of people, no one did counter them. And
those who did were promptly labelled “Islamophobes.”
Fully exploiting the uncontested space we provided them, extremists
promoted their supremacist, hate-filled ideology to thousands of Muslims
on satellite channels, through social media, on campuses and community
events, day in, day out. In the battle of ideas, deconstructing their
ideological world view was then and remains now one of our greatest
failures. And fail we did – collectively, as Muslim institutions, human
rights organisations, anti-racist groups and governments.
While the Muslim Council of Britain
perfected the art of issuing press statements, it did nothing to push
back on such poisonous teachings. For 10 years, my organisation Inspire,
in an attempt to build resilience to extremism in Muslim families,
taught theological counter-narratives to extremist ideology. The
response I heard from hundreds of Muslim mothers was the same. No one
has taught us this before and no one has taught our children it either.
What was apparent is that the weak “community” defence system would not
be able to hold back the tidal wave of extremist propaganda.
As extremists continue to radicalise people, we, however, are still
flapping our hands over what we even define as extremism. Extremism has
never been just about violence. Inciting hatred, discrimination and
supremacist ideals for political, religious or ideological causes should
be considered extreme in a 21st-century Britain which aspires to
establish a culture based on equality, human rights and a pluralistic
outlook. Yet thousands of videos of extremists such as Abu Haleema who
seek to radicalise remain online.
Our inability to recognise the ideological nature of the beast, in
particular Salafist, Islamist and Barelvi-inspired extremism, meant we
never fully understood who the key extremist groups, websites and
preachers were. We lack the essential insight into the activism of these
groups and their influence among British Muslims.
Instead of recognising the diverse picture, we blindly continue to
lump all 3 million Muslims – the good, bad and ugly – all under the
mythical banner of a “Muslim community”. This serves the interests not
of the ordinary Muslim, but of the extremists who hide behind this same
banner. As a result, we continue to legitimise the voices we should be
calling out.
Take Sky News for example. Last week, it invited Dilly Hussain of the Islamist-run website 5Pillars
to take part in a discussion on how we should tackle Islamist
extremism. Hussain has expressed his support for key 20th-century jihadi
ideologues including Sayyid Qutb and Abdullah Azzam. Qutb’s book Milestones
became the blueprint for modern-day Islamist extremist ideologies and
influenced Osama bin Laden. Azzam is a pivotal ideologue in shaping the
al-Qaida network. Yet despite this, you may want to ask why is it
5Pillars has more than 184,000 likes on Facebook alone? Yet here was Sky News asking an Islamist sympathiser how we should tackle Islamist extremism.
So what do we need to do ? Inevitably, a huge responsibility falls on
Muslim faith leaders and institutions in our country. Statements
condemning terror attacks do not reduce the Islamist threat we face, nor
address the challenge of 23,000 jihadis. They have a religious
obligation to build resilience in teaching young Muslims theological
counter-narratives to extremist ideology, while promoting a
contextualised understanding of Islam in the UK and amplifying such teachings to the masses both in the online and offline space.
We must provide platforms for young people to air their grievances,
whether they are concerns around anti-Muslim prejudice or foreign policy
and challenge wild anti-western conspiracy theories. It is vital that
we hammer home the message that violence and terrorism, no matter what
grievances the terrorists claim to hold, is never justified in Islam.
Crucially, Muslim activists and scholars must weed out the extremists in
our midst who justify their beliefs in the “name of Islam.” As one
scholar said last week, it’s time we #CallEmOut.
Second, we need to start investing in grassroots Muslim
counter-extremism organisations. At the moment, these lack essential
funding and resources. Philanthropies and charities have a social
responsibility to support Muslims who are on the frontline. A disastrous
combination of muddled thinking about political correctness and a risk-
averse outlook has acted as an obstacle.
Government must do more to explain the threat emanating from Islamist
terrorism and build trust among Muslims so we work together in
countering the extremists. This work should be supplemented with broader
government strategies that empower communities through programmes of
engagement, inclusion and integration.
Investing and reinvigorating a civil society movement based on our
shared values is desperately needed to push back against the extremists.
This requires all of us to defend our values over and above political
correctness or religious sensibilities, to help build the united Britain
we all want. We have already lost too much ground to Islamist
extremists. We will continue to do so unless we urgently step up to the
mark.Sara Khan is author of The Battle for British Islam: Reclaiming Muslim Identity from Extremism, and director of the counter-extremism organisation Inspire. @wewillinspire.

Map of L K Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990

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